James Curtis

How did you become a writer?

Just happenstance. I was in college and got interested in the work of a rather mysterious film director named James Whale. Intrigued, and having nothing better to do, I wrote a few letters and started getting responses. This led me to Whale's longtime companion, a producer with a reputation for working with writers. He encouraged me to put the story down on paper, although I had absolutely no background in writing. The result wasn't good, but it was eventually published, and I decided to try another, which turned out a bit better. But I never took it seriously in terms of a career, and went on to work in business. It was something I only did on the side until about 15 years ago, when I began doing it full time.    

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

My first editor, the late Marcia Magill at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, did a line edit on my second book that was a revelation to me. I still have those pages and whenever I grapple with draft content, I think of the things I learned from that experience.    

In terms of writers, Gene Fowler, who really popularized biography in the 1930s and 40s, was an early influence, as was Kevin Brownlow, who rescued the silent film era from incorrect projection speeds and tinkling pianos. He saw the romance of it all back when no one else did. Generally speaking, I have always responded to strong stylists like Raymond Chandler and Kurt Vonnegut. In terms of books, I never read one on how to write, but I devoured the nuts 'n' bolts interviews in the Paris Review collections. Currently, I have John McPhee's "Draft No. 4" on my nightstand, but I haven't gotten to it yet.    

When and where do you write? 

I have a home office and an old desk I keep thinking I should replace. As to when, I'd like to be able to say I have set hours, but I can't. When I have a deadline to meet, as I do now, I tend to work seven days a week.  

What are you working on now?

A biography of Buster Keaton for Knopf.  

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

No. Subject's block, yes. But not writer's block. 

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

From Mark Twain: "When you catch an adjective, kill it.” No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart." And from John McPhee: "Creative non-fiction is not making something up, but making the most of what you have."   

What’s your advice to new writers?

Persist. You'll only get better by continuing to work at it. There's never a time when you're good enough to slack off.  

James Curtis spent twenty-five years as a senior executive in the insurance and computer industries before turning full time to writing. His latest book, Last Man Standing: Mort Sahl and the Birth of Modern Comedy was published in May. He is also the author of William Cameron Menzies: The Shape of Films to Come; Spencer Tracy: A Biography; W. C. Fields: A Biography (winner of the 2004 Theatre Library Association Award, Special Jury Prize); James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters; and Between Flops: A Biography of Preston Sturges. Born in Los Angeles, he and his wife are longtime residents of Brea, California.

Tova Mirvis

How did you become a writer?

I first wanted to become a writer because I loved to read - I was one of the kids always buried in a book. And then, as I got older, I found that writing was the way I could understand the world, the way I could ask hard questions and think about different ways to be. I grew up in a religious world where I always had the sense that many things were being left unsaid, and writing became a way to say those things.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

I have had the gift of several teachers who have influenced me. In high school I had an English teacher - a poet with a renegade spirit who was marvelously out of place in my strict Orthodox Jewish high school - who first opened me to the possibility of writing. In college, I had the privilege to study with Mary Gordon, a brilliant writer and extremely generous teacher who first made me believe in the possibility of my becoming a writer.

When and where do you write?

I write during the day when my kids are in school. I try to sit for long stretches even when I don’t feel like it. I write different places depending on my mood - often in bed, sometimes in coffee shops, always with my headphones in to block out any noise.

What are you working on now?

I am just about to start a new novel, and though I’ve written four book, I still feel a sense of immense fear that I don’t know how to do this. Right now I am trying to slowly sneak up on the novel, making notes, doing some reading, letting myself think about what I want to write about before actually diving in.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Oh, all the time. I feel like its just part of the process for me - a back and forth between motion and stillness, between ease and frustration. I know all too well how maddening it can be, to feel used up or hollowed out; to feel like I have run into a wall. And then sometimes, that feeling of being empty or stuck gives way and  opens the path to the next breakthrough.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

Mary Gordon once said to me (when I was talking about not having enough time to write), “If you are a writer then you write.” I have never forgotten this straightforward and crucial piece of advice. I have learned the importance of sitting myself down, of putting in the hours.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Revise even when you think you are done. I know how strong that urge is to just be done with something - to send it out, to declare it finished. But don’t let that urge blind you to the need to go slow, to go back, to write it again. Be relentless with yourself when it comes to revision, with pushing yourself as hard as you can to take each sentence closer and closer to the truth.

Tova Mirvis is the author of the memoir The Book of Separation, which was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. She has also written three novels, Visible City, The Outside World, and The Ladies Auxiliary, which was a national bestseller. Her essays have  appeared in various publications including The New York Times,The Boston Globe Magazine, The Washington Post, and Psychology Today, and her fiction has been broadcast on National Public Radio.

Sandra Scofield

How did you become a writer?

I can’t remember when I didn’t write. My mother got me lessons with a retired teacher when I was six or seven years old. Iambic pentameter. I never studied writing, I didn’t even major in English. When I was in college I used to write stories and read them to friends in my boardinghouse. After college I spent my weekends writing. When I was working on a PhD in Education, I spent every stolen moment working on fiction. (I didn’t know about places like MFA programs; there were only a few anyway.) And oh I have read! In the late 1980’s I lost my job teaching second grade (boy that’s a story), and after I stopped crying about that I started writing my first novel. (I had been writing short stories for years.) GRINGA. I had no real idea how to go about it and I wrote 1400 pages for a first draft. But I learned, the hard way. 

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

I have loved many writers. I think in the early years when I was starting to write novels, I especially loved Robert Stone, Philip Roth, Mavis Gallant, European writers like Heinrich Boll and Colette and Alberto Moravia, and “old-fashioned” novels like Marjorie Morningstar and Little Women. Madame Bovary, for sure. Honestly, what I got from others that was important was encouragement—from my husband and my friends, and later from my wonderful agent, Emma Sweeney. I have to say, too, that when I started teaching in the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in 1993, it was the beginning of a long apprenticeship, because you can’t teach without digging into what you understand and what you have learned. 

When and where do you write?

If you are looking for a schedule/routine, keep looking. Life seems to be a sequence of interruptions. So I write when I can and where I am when the spirit strikes me. It doesn’t matter. I wrote most of my novels during the nighttime because it was quiet and I can’t sleep anyway. I kept my papers (this was before computers) in dishbuckets in the kitchen, along one wall. I have kept journals and I have used scrap paper. I write on anything. Sometimes I see things I scribbled in the back of a book I happen to be reading. I wrote my last couple of books sitting in a chair in the living room with little stools around me topped with books, stacks of papers, and Coke cans. And on the floor, what else? Dish buckets.

What are you working on now?

Well, since I really just finished THE LAST DRAFT within the last year, and then put together SWIM: STORIES OF THE SIXTIES, I’ve been devoting myself to painting. It’s another part of my consciousness. And some traveling. In my head I am writing a novel about two young girls whose parents both die within a month of one another; they are cared for by their grandmothers. The girls have very different ways of going forward. But I confess not much of the thinking is on the page yet. I have a stack of files in the spare bedroom, too, detritus from all the years of summer workshops I taught (which is where the impetus for THE LAST DRAFT came from). I think I am in the early stage of creating one more book, occasional essays on craft. I have two boxes in the closet filled with false starts. But I’m 74, how much can I get done? We’ll see!

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Oh sure. It’s called self-doubt. That is exactly where I am with the novel I mentioned above. Here I’ve written a book about writing novels, and I wonder: Am I up to it? And I look at publishing and all the million dollar sales, and I think: What is going on? Is my time over? What will get this (last, I’m sure) novel done is just the obsession a story is, the need to get it down. The joy of discovering the story, rolling with its evolution.

What's the best writing advice you've ever received?

Ignore the noise. Don’t rush. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Ignore the noise.

Walk a lot.

Just do it. Don’t get caught up in expectations, or slogged down in doubt. Don’t think about writing; write. If it doesn’t make you happy, I don’t know why you would keep at it. Life is too short to create your own suffering. But if you are plagued by thinking about stories, then read, study, write, revise. Look out at the world and ask yourself: What is speaking to me? What do I care about? What needs to get said? What is inside me? Really. Listen to your heart. Study craft: books (there are many good ones) and workshops (a wealth of summer opportunities); and READ! Devour books. At some point, if you want to, find a writing coach or a writing group. I say all this because writing has always been a spiritual and emotional as well as intellectual undertaking. It has always been about the process. If you want to be a commercial writer, you have to ask someone else. You can learn to do that, I think, a lot easier than you can learn to write literary fiction or poetry. It’s a talent.

Oh. Last bit of advice. If writers don’t buy books, who will? Think of it as tithing. And you’ll never have to wonder what to do with your insomnia.

Sandra Scofield, a native Texan, is a long time resident of Oregon and Montana. She has written 11 books, including Beyond Deserving, a National Book Award finalist, and, most recently, Swim: Stories of the Sixties, and The Last Draft: A Novelist’s Guide to Revision. In her sixties she took up landscape painting, and has traveled to Italy, France, and England to look at landscape and art. She has taught at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival since 1993, and is on the faculty of the Pine Manor College Solstice MFA Program in Boston.

http://www.sandrajscofield.com